Old Mole Variety Hour

The Old Mole burrows down to the roots of the great issues of our time – the struggles of ordinary people for democratic and sustainable ways of life. The Mole goes where corporate media fear to tread, supporting grassroots challenges to top-down authority and giving voice to movements that shake the foundations of an unjust society. The Moles' perspective is democratic, broadly socialist, and feminist. (We count Karl Marx as a friend).

Frann Michel hosts this Bastille day episode, and we hear these segments:

Bill Resnick and Norm Diamond discuss worker-cooperative businesses and their significance for the left. Do they prefigure the democratic production of socialism and empower participants? Or are they fragile small businesses that either become as cutthroat as other capitalist enterprises to survive, or else fail after having distracted their members from more promising mass organizing?

You can listen to and share any segment of the show by clicking the links above. To listen to the whole show, click the play button below. You can also download the files to listen to on your mp3 player. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter for updates about up-coming and recently archived shows. Email us at oldmolevarietyhour-at-gmail<dot>com to leave comments, suggestions, leads, ask questions, or learn how you can produce short segments for the show.

Gordon Lafer talks with the Old Mole’s Bill Resnick about why education and training programs will not put a dent in the unemployment rate. Lafer is a political economist at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center and the author of The Job Training Charade.

Today’s Psychology and Politics segment, with psychologists Jan Haaken and Tod Sloan, begins with a tribute to Jan’s colleague Hugo Du Coudray (also known as Hugo Maynard), professor emeritus of psychology at Portland State, who died this past week. Hugo started the community psychology program at PSU and was a long time social justice activist. He also was a remarkable character who had a distinct vision of what psychology was all about, and its role in understanding social problems. Here is a videoof a talk by Hugo on the 1964 Free Speech Movement in Berkeley.

In Part Two of their Psychology and Politics segment, Jan Haaken and Tod Sloan talk about the report this past week on the involvement of the American Psychological Association in CIA administered torture practices of the Bush era. They also take up the history of psychology's involvement in the military, and challenges from progressive mental health practitioners that are part of this same history. They refer back to Part One in which they remembered psychologist Hugo Du Coudray (also known as Hugo Maynard), who died this past week.

Tom Becker is our host for this edition of the Old Mole, and we learn why education and job training are not the solution to unemployment, how US tax law benefits corporate tax evasion, and how and why the American Psychological Association condoned torture during the G.W. Bush presidency. We also learn about the work of the late Hugo Du Coudray.

To hear the whole show, use the play button below. Or you can listen to individual pieces by following these links.

Norm Diamond talks with the Low Tide Drifters, whose "music for the rest of us" draws on growing up in coastal oregon, wobbly didacticism, environmental as well as socially conscious themes, and phenomenal performances all around. They talk about their backgrounds and the importance of music as a conveyer of history and popular understandings.

You can listen to or share any segment of the show by clicking on the links above. Listen to the whole show by clicking the play-button below. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more updates. Email us at oldmolevarietyhour<>at<>gmail<>dot<>com to get on our mailing list (just show updates), or to send us comments/suggestions/questions, or to get involved in making the show.

It's convenient to have the Old Mole audio files available.
Even more useful for some of us would be transcripts of the commentaries (Clayton Morgareidge). Written material allows a person a chance to review, consider, digest and refer to mentioned references & thinkers. The "Well Read Red" commentary from 4 Aug 08 is a good example of a piece I'd like to read at my own pace.